


advice & assistance obtainable immediately

by mei_an



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BACK ON MY BULLSHIT, Deus Ex Machina, Endgame!Steve Rogers Is Not Worthy, Gen, I will die mad, also, anti avengers endgame, did MMRRF realize that the universe is really big?, i mean - the universe is really really very big, or rather: Doctor Ex Machina, previous movie versions may retain potentiality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:15:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27351070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mei_an/pseuds/mei_an
Summary: The Avengers used time travel to undo the Snap.The Doctor is not impressed by these amateurs.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	advice & assistance obtainable immediately

**Author's Note:**

> Where are Yaz, Ryan, and Graham, you may ask? The answer is: wherever you want them to be.  
> Is this an alternate timeline where they never traveled with 13? OK!  
> Is this a future when they've stopped traveling with 13? OK!
> 
> Honestly, I had enough trouble keeping up with the characters already here. Adding three more would have broken me.
> 
> Writing is hard, you guys. Writing is hard.
> 
> Title is from the sign on the front of the TARDIS.

It was a nice day. Beautiful, really. Blue skies, light breeze. The perfect weather for happily-ever-after.

Of course it was. ‘Happily-ever-after’ was for the hero of the story after all. And it didn’t give two shits about what or who had to be trampled over along the way.

Steve and Banner were checking the time travel equipment ( _time travel_. seriously. what the hell.) with Wilson loitering nearby. Bucky stayed back. He had nothing to contribute there and he didn’t – he couldn’t –

He took a deep breath. He took another one. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, focusing on the heat of the sun on his face, the sound of the wind in the trees. He did not allow the flinch as someone’s voice rose abruptly and the roiling mess of emotions stirred. No. Not right now. Later, he would (and he really, actually would, his therapist is going to be so proud of him). But not. Right. Now.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the ground solid underneath your feet. Feel the wind. Listen to…

What the hell was that?

Bucky opened his eyes. “Hey shut up!”

“Bucky? What’s the matter?”

“Barnes?”

(It wasn’t coming from the equipment. It wasn’t coming _from_ anywhere. Unless anywhere was _everywhere_ )

“Can’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Are you okay?”

Was it just him? He was doing better, Bucky knew he was, but he still didn’t trust his own mind. And this _sound_. This sort of wheezing and groaning, almost mechanical, growing louder and like nothing he’d ever heard before. The wind was getting stronger.

“Tell me you guys see that.” Wilson pointed to a patch of air that had taken on a blue hue before fading away and coming back with a darker and deeper color. Looking more solid. “OK and I still can’t believe I’m actually asking this – aliens or magic?”

“We’re about to find out.” Steve picked up the magic alien hammer and moved to stand in front of the case with the alien magic stones that were able to destroy the universe.

The grinding sound stopped as a blue box stood in what had been an empty patch of grass. The box said ‘Police.’

“Police? Seriously? Did someone call the alien and/or magic police on us? Is there an alien and/or magic police? Why wouldn’t Thor or the raccoon or the flying cape guy mention this earlier?” Wilson moved to flank Steve while Bucky scanned the clearing for any other unexpected visitors. Nothing so far and he couldn’t hear anything from inside the box. His hands itched for a gun and he wished Shuri could take that instinct from his mind the way she had his trigger words.

The door creaked open to a flood of words in an English accent. “I know, I know! Look, the reality-distorting ingots demanded a bit more attention than one little hammer, all right? I’m sorry! I forgot!” At least, Bucky thought distantly, the woman was blonde. He didn’t know what he’d do with an English brunette right now.

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to explain what you’re doing here.” Steve said. The door closed and the woman’s head snapped in their direction, apparently noticing them for the first time. She focused on Steve’s jump suit and… ignored them.

“Oh bother, don’t tell me I’m too early!” Everyone tensed when she shoved a hand into a pocket, but it was only a watch. “No! No, I’m not too early – might be just on time! That doesn’t happen often. Almost never, really. Actually, I’m more of a fashionably late kind of person.”

“And your friend, Ms. …?”

She blinked at Steve.

“Whoever you left in that box.”

“Oh you meant me! I’m the Ms.! Will get used to that. Eventually. And nah, no one in the box, it’s just me. You know how it is when you travel alone for a while, start talking to yourself and all.” Bucky didn’t completely believe her, but there was only one door and a box that size couldn’t fit too many people inside. Of course, just one person could be threat enough depending on what that person was capable of.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Steve’s patience was fraying, not that he had much to start with. “I still need to know who you are and why you’re here.” An unknown had appeared using technology (magic?) they didn’t recognize right when they were preparing to shift the most powerful objects they had ever encountered. They were all wary and guarded and Bucky wondered if it was his HYDRA training or his Memory Issues that had him turning over her first words when the others didn’t seem to think them odd.

“Me? What about you lot? What are you up to all the way out here with no one around?”

 _Reality-distorting ingots. She was so preoccupied with the ‘reality-distorting ingots’ that she forgot about the hammer._ Bucky could see the hammer plain as day, right there in Steve’s hand. The case though.

“This is private property, so we don’t have to answer that. Since you’re trespassing, you do.”

The case that had been filled with six powerful stones, placed there directly upon removal from the gauntlet and locked. And it hadn’t been opened since then. Right?

“I get the feeling she’s not too fussed about trespassing what with the box that seems to go anywhere, Banner.”

Except when Steve and Banner had checked on the stones to make sure that everything was secure for their return. Because they had checked and secured the stones before they tossed Steve off into the timestream, right?

“Sam, is now really the time?”

They weren’t stupid enough not to do that, right?

Shit.

“Were you talking about the Infinity Stones?” Bucky asked.

Everyone stopped and looked at him. Attention. Yay.

“She never said--”

“Reality-distorting ingots. That’s what she said. Did you do something with the Stones?”

Banner seemed affronted at the implication. “Barnes, that’s impossible. We would know if anyone tried to tamper with the case.”

The woman ignored him, staring intently at Bucky and – starting to grin?

“Well aren’t you a sharp one. What’s your name?”

“Bucky. Barnes.”

“Bucky Barnes! Nice name, that, Bucky Barnes. Alliterative. All right then Bucky Barnes – say I did it. Say I snuck in and took the Infinity Stones when you all weren’t looking. What do you think about that?”

“Depends what you did with them.”

“Put them back. Obviously. Tampering with the timelines of those things? You lot nearly blew up the universe!”

“Hey,” Wilson interjected as Steve and Banner went to the case, “me and Barnes were dust at the time. You got beef with how the universe was saved, you’re looking at those two over there.”

Bucky side-eyed the man. Had Wilson just defended him?

Steve had other things on his mind. The case was open. It was empty.

“Last time,” he growled, advancing on the woman. “Who are you? And what have you done with the Infinity Stones?”

She spun around to meet Steve, expression deadly. “I just said what I did, or can the great Captain America not follow a conversation? I put. Them. Back. And cleaned up the rest of your mess while I was at it! Stomping around all up and down the timeline, creating paradox after paradox – honestly! Amateurs!”

“Now miss!” Most people would react to the giant green guy scowling at them. Not her. “That is not how time travel works! Of course we wouldn’t want a paradox, but those aren’t real. It might make for an interesting story, but the math just doesn’t support the existence of temporal paradoxes. So why don’t you tell us what you really did with the Stones.” Bucky wondered at Banner’s certainty when, as far as he knew, blue boxes marked ‘police’ didn’t appear out of nowhere either.

She looked at them. If ‘look’ was the right way to describe a feeling like you were something very small that now had the attention of something very very big.

“I never did introduce myself, did I?

“Hello. I’m the Doctor. Just the Doctor. Ring any bells? UNIT? No?

“I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterbrous. I’m a Time Lord – that’s my species, not my job title, though I suppose maybe it is my job title too, just a little bit. I did go to school for it after all, to learn all those tricky fiddly bits about time travel. And here I am two thousand years later. Two thousand years of experience traveling through space and time, but a couple of humans got together one afternoon and did some math so I guess that’s that then! Clearly they must know far more about time travel than I ever could and _what_ is _that_?”

The woman – the Doctor – had paced around them and was now investigating the platform.

“Don’t touch anything!”

“Is this what you’ve been using to time travel? Bit basic. Like a prototype vortex manipulator! Except not really. How do you – oh with those little particles I bet! It is a bit clever, I’ll give you that. Way off base, super dangerous, a disaster waiting to happen – but a bit clever. For humans.”

Wilson asked, “Do we… believe her?”

“I really don’t want to.” Steve said, “but I think I do. One thing though… Doctor. If you’re capable of so much, if you’re from a species that is capable of so much – why now? Why are you only here now? Why didn’t you help when Thanos came?”

She stilled. “What,” she said lightly, “and steal all the glory from the Mighty Avengers? Nah. That would be rude, wouldn’t it? Used to be really rude, me, but I’m tryin’ to give it up.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Oi! So ‘cause I’m trying to not be rude, think that gives you leave to be?”

“Bullshit that’s why you didn’t help with Thanos. Had better things to do, did you? Your species some kind of holier-than-thou no interfering with the lesser beings type? What?”

“Yes.”

“… Really?”

“I said Time Lord. To be specific: the last of the Time Lords. Used to be there was an entire species keeping an eye out, good or bad. But now? A whole entire universe, only fourteen billion years old now and so many many billions more to go. And it’s just little old me running around.

“Thing about being a time traveller – I don’t stay in one time period. The first hint I got of the whole mess, I was a dozen galaxies over and several geological eras upstream and it wasn’t what _he_ did that got to me – it was you all trampling carelessly all over the timeline. A couple of you even fought yourselves. Yourselves! Like you’ve never even heard of Blinovitch! You have no idea what it took to keep the Reapers away.

“I had to fix what you broke first. I had to put the Stones back and make sure that this little corner of the universe wasn’t going to fold in on itself from you all ripping through spacetime before I could investigate what made you do it in the first place. And that’s why I can’t change it – not when it’s part of my own history now. I can’t risk a potential paradox of that size. It wouldn’t be just one tiny little corner that turned inside out while everyone else trundled along obliviously. It would be _everything_. Thanos made sure of that. I’ve already had to reboot the universe once, I can’t be sure it would work again. Big Bang 2 was a necessity, this would be personal convenience.

“What about you? You had the Stones, you could have undone what happened. Rewound time. Probably the only person who would’ve remembered those few years would be the one who used them. For everyone else, those years never happened in the first place. Not to them.”

Steve shifted his grip on Mjolnir. “About like you said. What happened, happened. People hurt, but they survived and went on. We have no right to take that from them, to change what they’ve accomplished since the Blip. Tony… we couldn’t do that.”

“Hypocrite.”

Bucky didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until he saw everyone looking at him.

“Buck?” Steve sounded hurt. Bucky felt himself respond to that hurt instinctively and he resented the hell out of it.

“You’re actually gonna stand here and talk about how ‘what’s done is done’ and ‘you can’t change the past’ when you,” he choked, “you want to-- you’ve been planning to—”

Now the eyes were switching between him and Steve and that really wasn’t any better.

“What are you talking about? Steve, what is he talking about?”

“Bucky.” Steve said. “We talked about this. I thought you understood. Understood why and supported me.”

“Understood _what_? Support _what_?” Pretty sure Wilson didn’t deserve to be ignored like that.

“I lied. I understood that I couldn’t convince you that you were wrong so I stuffed all the bullshit down ‘cause if this was really gonna be the last time I ever saw you.” Wait. “Doctor.” Bucky turned to his unexpected savior. “You took care of it all you said. So no time travel for Steve today?”

Wordlessly, she lifted her arm toward the platform. She was holding something that started making noises and the equipment began to spark. “No one’s going anywhere.” She promised. “Not using that stuff, anyway, not anytime soon.” The containers with the Pym particles shattered.

Banner was beside himself. The Doctor didn’t care. “You’ll notice that all the blueprints and other technical info has been purged. Everything about this truly terrible method of time travel only exists in your brains now. Which does mean that you could rebuilt it, theoretically. I suggest you don’t, not unless you’ve developed some actual ethics.”

“What have you done?” Bucky knew that tone. That was the tone Steve took when he was barreling into his righteous indignation. Bucky used to be fond of that tone. Here and now, it made him sick.

“Being the adult in the room,” Bucky said quietly, “and taking the weapon away from the children before we can hurt ourselves or anyone else with it. More than we already have, anyway. As far as I can tell.”

Steve glared at him and Bucky was done.

“Since there’s no reason for me to be here, I’m leaving. Doctor, thank you for your help. Steve, if you follow me I might just punch your face in. Don’t do it.”

“Bucky…”

“No. I’m pissed off, asshole. I’m hurt and angry and pissed off and fucking betrayed and I’m not going to pretend that I’m not. Not anymore. Don’t come after me.” Bucky paused on his way. “Wilson, I’m sorry. You should’ve been told. I should have, even if he didn’t want to.”

* * *

Sam Wilson was not a stupid man. He had a pretty good idea what Barnes and Steve had been dancing around and his own sense of hurt and anger were rising. He kept a hold of that as he watched Steve watch Barnes walk away. Not right now.

‘Asshole’ was definitely right and he was going to let the fucker have it. But not right now.

Steve took a step – to do what Sam would never know – and cursed as Thor’s hammer slipped from his hand, tumbling into the grass. He stooped to pick it up. It didn’t move. Steve wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled.

The hammer… didn’t move.

Before anyone could comment, the Doctor stepped in and swiped it, easily swinging Mjolnir over her shoulder like a baseball bat. “Only in darkness are we revealed. Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour. In the deepest pit. Without hope. Without witness. Without reward.

“Whatever you were thinking of. I’d reconsider it. Carefully.”

“Deep,” Sam said, shaken. Steve had dropped the hammer _and couldn’t pick it up again?_ What the _fuck_? “What fortune cookie’d you get that from?”

“My late wife’s diary.”

Shit. His damn mouth.

“I think,” the Doctor announced, “that this might be one of those ‘teachable moment’ things I’ve heard about.”

So this woman (Is this a woman? a small part of Sam’s mind wondered. This is an alien – does a human concept of ‘woman’ apply here?) swanned in and upended the whole day, everything that they knew about time travel (because that was a thing that they knew bits about now, time travel was a thing that they _did_ now) and she could pick up the If-Ye-Be-Worthy Hammer. Steve couldn’t (anymore) but she could and Sam sat his ass down in the grass right where he was. If Steve and Banner wanted to get all het up that was their problem. Sam Wilson was gonna learn shit from this person who had apparently saved the universe (again) from the Avengers’ fuck ups.

“Alright Teach. Class is in session.”

“More like guest lecturer, but! Back on topic! You lot had the Infinity Stones and decided that the best solution was to just unDust people, not actually undo what was done. You had the time to think through the consequences of what you planned to do with the Stones. But did you do that? Did you _think_? No you did not.”

Steve and Banner definitely weren’t happy with the direction this was taking, but Sam knew that it was no good to turn away from the truth, even if it was uncomfortable. He eyed Steve again. Damn, he was not looking forward to that conversation.

“Just here on this planet you’ve got the sudden influx of billions of people to feed and house with an infrastructure that’s not designed to accommodate those numbers anymore. And which is even higher than before; Thanos may have heard of ‘overpopulation’ but the concept of ‘re-population’ clearly passed him by. And the social questions of how to reintegrate them all. But we’re not focusing on that – you lot will be spending plenty of time dealing with those issues. No, I need to remind you that what you did affected the universe.

“As in: The. Universe. The _entire_ universe. You _pudding brains._

“Thanos decided to erase half of all sapient life in the universe. There are about two trillion galaxies in the universe. That’s two million million, if you prefer counting that way. Some don’t have any sapient species, many, like the Milky Way, have multiple. So let’s average that to the barest minimum, let’s call it one species per galaxy. It’s not, it’s more than that, but I’ll make it simple for you. One species per galaxy with a population of oh say about seven billion? We’ll go with that. Seven billion. So how many people were affected by Thanos, either Dusted or remained? What’s the population of the universe in this little exercise? Just around fourteen sextillion. That’s a big number – got twenty-one zeros to it! Can you comprehend how big a number that is, how many people that is? No you can’t! You and your little human monkey brains can’t even begin to make sense of that huge a number! And it's still too small!

“And you made a choice that affected each and every one of them. Did that occur to you? The self-described ‘heroes.’ The very few who even knew about Thanos. The vast majority don’t and never will. They watched their friends and family die and return _and they will never know how or why it happened._ Not the truth. But these are, of course, thinking, rationalizing people. They’ll make up their own reasons. They’ll have their own ways of coping.

“Some of them will kill all of the returned people – clearly demons, y’know? Others will come back to deserted settlements because the ones left behind are all dead. They killed themselves in fear of the gods’ wrath or they just plain couldn’t support themselves after losing half the population – what? Did you think Thanos had some cut-off point? That the only civilizations Dusted were the ones that fit his definition of ‘overpopulated’?

“Half of all life means half of _all_ life. Keep up.

“Some serious changes in societal attitudes, especially those who thought the Dusting was divine punishment. Or divine reward, could go either way. Lots of wars – tribe A by the mountain blames tribe B by the river or planet A in this system thinks planet B a few star systems over did it. They’ve never heard of Thanos of the Avengers or the Infinity Stones. Never will. They’re clear over on the other side of the universe – no member of the species will ever meet anyone from the Milky Way.

“Then there’s the species whose lifespans are different from humans. The ones who live longer than humans might do better. ‘Course, they tend to be the ones who least needed Thanos’ stupidity since they tend to experience the consequence of their own actions and are better about addressing the problems Thanos put down to ‘population.’ The shorter ones, though… top of my head, I can think of three species who, by the time their Dusted were returned, the generation that they came from had almost if not completely died out of simple age. Oh, that hit a nerve, didn’t it? Yes, in just five Earth years. Yes ‘Earth years’ even if you didn’t personally know aliens, Earth astronomers have known for ages that days and years and seasons are different on different planets!

“Speaking of, the space nomads! Not everyone lives on a planet, y’know. Some people live on space ships or space stations. Even though the Stones aren’t alive and thinking, they still compensated for your intent as best they could – yes they did, there is not a single planet in existence anywhere that is in the same place that it was five year ago. You are standing on a rock that is spinning at 1000 mph and while it’s doing that, it’s also circling around the star you call Sol at 67,000 mph and while it’s doing that Sol is taking this rock and everything else in this system on a whirl around the Milky Way at 490,000 mph and _at the same time_ the galaxy itself is moving bloody 1.3 million mph through the universe! Everything is moving all the time and it’s brilliant!

“There’s a pattern to that the Stones could follow. You wanted people put back, so the Stones extrapolated the planets’ new positions and put them there instead of literally where they were taken from which is now empty space where planets used to be.

“Yeah I’m serious. When you’re doing something to the actual literal entire universe, you have to think on a cosmic scale. That’s the point of this.

“Anyway. Planets move. Why do we care that planets move again? Space ships! That’s right. Space ships and space stations and people that live on them, on things that don’t follow a drift pattern, that might have been moved or dismantled or just turned off without enough people to run them. You see where I’m going with this.

“You claim that you were staying true to your principles, or what have you? That you had no right to ‘play God’ with people’s lives? But that’s exactly what you did anyway. I’m not saying I don’t understand the thought. The ends do not always justify the means and sometimes how a thing gets done matters just as much as what your trying to do. But you didn’t have a deadline, there wasn’t any rush. This was no heat-of-the-moment, split-second decision. _You had time._ Before you used that sorry excuse for time travel, before you’d even figured out if you could use it. You. Had. Time. Time to sit down and think it through and consider what else might happen besides assuaging your own guilt. But no. Couldn’t do that.

“Choosing to inflict this on the universe ought to have been a difficult decision. But because the consequences get to be borne by everyone except you, because you’re so caught up in yourselves that you think what’s best for you is what’s best for _the entire universe_ …

“Stick to Earth, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. You’ve done more than enough damage already.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **me going into the story:** I’m gonna write about the Doctor swiping the hammer out from under Steve’s nose and Bucky not supporting the ‘stay in the past’ fuckery because Bucky having some actual self-esteem is my jam. This’ll be great!
> 
>  **me staggering out of the story:** I just wanted to double-check that Marvel really did have Thanos Snap the whole universe, not just, like, the Milky Way. But… the universe is really big and what were Thanos’ parameters anyway and species in other galaxies aren’t going to have the same context as Earth humans and and and
> 
> Look. I had some questions, ok? The soapbox just kind of happened. Sorry not sorry.


End file.
